where was this?

@aoifejohanna Clones, Co. Monaghan. You commented before I'd finished description, Quick Draw McGrath! :)

Ha ha, I do be waiting for these in the morning, best stream going :)

@aoifejohanna Why, thank you, kind lady!

Wouldn't that infrastructure be great to have now.....

Hah...McGrath...funny :-)

Looks like a bomb site and the destruction of the infrastructure was just as complete as if it was. Shortsighted?????

It looks just like the current platform at Wexford, probably built around the same time, lovely roof and well constructed buildings. Maybe the cost of upkeep since 1960 would have been pricey too?

Yes the Irish North route was closed to passengers in 1957, but remained open for meagre parcel traffic until the end of 1959, explaining the late demolition of the infrastructure.

Todd Andrews has a lot to answer for. How much of the anti-railway policies were motivated by hatred for the original builders of the system, who FF saw as "British"?

Destroying that station is a crime, especially as you see what most of these stations were replaced with.

@hab3045 Unfortunately this was quite common in Ireland.

@eyelightfilms Alas, not just in Ireland. We lost a stunning station here in The Hague, (Netherlands) and the nice one they left is now surrounded by ugly modern office blocks. Style died shortly after WW2.

It was the Northern Ireland Government that caused Clones station to be closed. The NI Govt insisted that those parts of the Great Northern (I) Railway in the 6 Counties must close with the exception of the Dublin-Belfast, Dublin-Omagh-Derry main lines and the Warrenpoint branch - that left the stretches of GN (I) R lines operated by the CIE unfeasible - the Bundoran branch would have been completely isolated and the Dundalk-Clones-Cavan lin remaining under CIE contyrol was deemed to be pointless. The NI Govt seems to have been very pro-road and wanted to abolish its railways almost completely in the 1960s...

@53806340@N06 Interesting, Lindsey, thank you.

For anyone interested, in 1953, the Great Northern Railway Board was set up to run what had been a private company, the Great Northern Railway of Ireland - it ran the Dublin Connolly (then Amiens Street) to Belfast Great Victoria Street railway, along with the Portadown-Derry via Omagh, Dundalk to Omagh via Clones and Enniskillen with its branch from Bundoran Junction to Bundoran, and the Portadown-Moneghan-Clones-Cavan line, along with various branch lines. In effect, the Great Northern Railway Board was a ntional industry run jointly by the Irish and Northern Ireland governments. In 1956, the NI Govt under the auspices of the Minstry of Commerce announced that it intended to close the sections of line within Northern Ireland of the Portadown-Clones-Cavan, Dundalk-Clones-Enniskillen-Omagh and Bundoran Jnc Bundoran lines. Under statutory requirements the respective ministries of commerce referred the proposals to the Transport Tribunals in Dublin and Belfast. The one in Dublin very firml;y opposed the closures saying that they would save only £14,000. A further finding was that dieselisation would have turned the £14,000 loss into a £68,000 profit. The Northern Tribunal chairman rejected the southern board's findings, (the NI Govt offered no evidence) and voted to go ahead with closure anyway - which took effect from the end of September 1957. This left the Bundoran branch as an unworkable 8 mile stretch in the Republic, a Dundalk to Clones railway, and a Glasslough-Clones-Cavan (and Belturbet Branch) railway. Cavan was served from Dublin via a branch from the Mullingar to Sligo railway. The Passenger traffic on offer on the remaining lines was insufficient to make them an economic condition, so the GNRB applied to close them - the necessary permission could not be obtained in time so there was a temporary service from Dundalk to Clones, Glasslough to Clones and Clones to Cavan, with a service on the Belturbet branch as well. This lasted until 12th October 1957 after which there was some parcel and freight traffic. I hope this is of interest. If you would like to know more there is a book by Edward M Patterson called "The Great Northern Railway (Ireland), published by Oakwood Press (New Edition 2003 - 0 85361 602 7). There are other useful books too, let me know if anyone would like details. Best wishes

@53806340@N06 Thanks, Lindsey! Glad to see that we have Great Northern Railway in our collections...

Thank you NLI! I looked at the related entries and found another book I need to add to my collection which I didn't know about :-) "Irish Railways since 1916" by Michael H C Baker is also a good source on the broader Irish Railways picture - the background to closures in the Republic as well as NI. It is in the NLI collection: catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000060454 Best wishes,

@53806340@N06 That's great to hear!

I remembering piling out of the Cavan Train onto this platform to watch Cavan play in the Railway Cup (or some other championship) in the early fifties. I also remembering boarding a train for Belfast from this platform in 1955 on my way out of the country and a whole new life.

@crexcrex Did Cavan win? And did you come back?

Can't remember if they won, and when I returned thirty five years later the railway stations had gone.

this is just line lifting. station stood for a long time after this.

@83425085@N08 Until when, do you know?

sometime in the 1980's. The main building was tossed with a wrecking ball. last train was 59 if memory serves me correct. have a copy of the front page of the northern standard the week of the last passenger service. I walked the old line from clones to bundoran a few years back. made a radio documentary about it. www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/radio-documentary-bundoran-exp...

The republic were very slow to sell off railway infrastructure, much of it stood as if time had stopped, in complete contrast to the north, where there was a zeal to get rid of the 'irish north' for whatever reasons.....you can guess. Some suggest that transport tycoons (trucks etc) had a very 'close' relationship with some of the higher echelons of stormount and the UTA. Also the GNRI employed alot of catholics especially on the 'irish north'. There was no appetite or desire for the northern government to keep the a service in place that linked the north and the republic in terms of commerce and a societal link. Such a shame.

@83425085@N08 Thanks a million! Adding the radio documentary link under the photo. And you have nothing on your photostream :( Photo of the article from the Northern Standard might be a good start?? :)

will get round to it, hard to get the time to breath these days! i have a collection of shots and reproductions (various quality), and will upload soon (hopefully lol). actually i have been looking for photos of the ulster canal when it was a working waterway, might be just too early for photography though...

@83425085@N08 Like Canal Quay, Coalisland?

this canal en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Canal was a commercial failure from the start to finish, but a great account of a journey on it survives in this book archive.org/details/englishmaninirel00scot

Ah ok. Was hoping we might have some photos to help you out...

May I use this photograph of Clones station in a book I am about to publish on Railways and Frontiers in Europe?

@64983254@N04 Hello there, and thanks for the query. You should contact Glenn on email: permissions@nli.ie. The full title from our catalogue is "Remains of Clones station that was partially demolished upon the station's closure, Co. Monaghan". It's from our O'Dea Collection and the NLI call no. is ODEA 22/76... (Photos on here are for personal/research use. Publication in a book is a different matter.)